


Love Is.

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Challenge Response, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-26
Updated: 2001-01-26
Packaged: 2018-11-10 07:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11122974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: What is love?





	Love Is.

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).
    
    
    Love is like the rising of the sun or the blooming of a rare tropical
    flower.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it creates something of great
    beauty, gradually filling the heart with this most delicate and precious
    of emotions.  Intense searching is needed to find it, and then must be
    nurtured, tended carefully to prevent it from fading. 
    
    Bullshit.
    
    The so-called experts who fill the books and talk shows with their crap
    about 'gradual' love have obviously never been to the Stanley Raymond
    Kowalski school of romance.  Don't know what they're talking about. 
    
    See, love has nothing to do with sunrises or flowers.  It's more like
    being hit by a train.  One minute, you're cruising along, feeling more
    or less okay, the next...WHAM!  Sionara, you poor bastard.  It's all
    over.  One big aw fuck moment, and you're the latest one of Cupid's lost
    causes. 
    
    Love is looking across the cafeteria, and aw fuck, it happens.
    
    There's the trays of grayish veggies, pressure-cooked within an inch
    of their lives.  There's the chicken ala king, with the little rubbery
    chickeny bits smothered in thick yellow stuff that looks and tastes like
    elephant snot.  There's Mrs. Frish, with her support hose and her blue
    eyeshadow and the hairnet too big over her dyed black hair.  Just like
    every day.  And there in the middle of middle school lunch time hell,
    an angel appears. 
    
    I've been going to this school long enough that I know I've seen her,
    but I've never *seen* her. 
    
    She's got this hair that looks like someone poured gold down her back,
    all the way down to her waist.  Big, sky blue eyes, without a lot of
    makeup like some of the girls.  Just enough to make her look a little
    grown up and pretty enough to make my eyes hurt.  Someone at her table
    tells a joke, and she's laughing so hard that her jello salad is in the
    grips of a serious earthquake on her tray.  It's a perfect laugh, like
    bells and birds and wind chimes.  She's tall and slim and so graceful
    that I know she dances, and I thank God for every formerly-hated hour
    in Mr. Himmerman's dance class. 
    
    Then she looks at me, just for a moment, and I'd sell my soul if only
    she'd do it again.  And again.  Forever doesn't seem long enough anymore,
    because Cupid's dead-on, and I'm just bleeding my heart all over the
    chicken ala king that I wasn't gonna eat in the first place. 
    
    I'm in love, and I don't even know her name.  What's more, she's a goddess
    and I'm the skinniest, nerdiest thing the eighth grade's ever seen. 
    She's obviously from money, and my dad's a meat packer.  She's sitting
    in the middle of the table with the coolest guys and most popular girls,
    and I'm off in the corner with the other social rejects.  The captain
    of the football team is offering to carry her tray, and the only thing
    I play is chess.  I'm screwed, and I don't even care, because odds are
    just some  stupid thing that other people believe in. 
    
    Of course, love is also about losing it.
    
    Love is getting my heart ripped out eighteen years down the line.  It's
    too many nights spent dancing with air and getting drunk and crying like
    a baby, which is even worse when no one is there to make me feel like
    an idiot for doing it.  It's throwing picture frames across the room
    and cutting my fingers on the glass when I try and put them back together
    and bleeding all over the rug and not feeling the pain. 
    
    It's thinking I'm gonna die and knowing I'm not and wishing I would.
    It's swearing that I'm never gonna let that particular train hit me again,
    and that if Cupid so much as looks in my direction, I'll stick those
    arrows up his ass. 
    
    Love is seeing Cupid laugh in my face.
    
    Love is looking across a couch in the middle of a guy's night out, and
    aw fuck, it happens. No, better rephrase that.  First time was an aw-fuck.
    This time is an AW *FUCK*! 
    
    This is Cupid laughing his ass off at the expense of his favorite mortal
    bull's-eye. 
    
    There's Han Solo on the television screen, ducking the Millennium Falcon
    through those asteroids and being just too cool for words.   There's
    the pizza box on the table from our usual delivery place, with the grease
    spots and a couple shreds of gluey cheese the only thing left of the
    medium pie with pepperoni and pineapple.  There's my can of beer and
    his can of ginger ale, both half-empty.  There's the wolf, sprawled on
    the rug, trying to hide the red sauce on his nose.  Just like always.
    And there in the middle of introducing someone to the classic cultural
    institution that is Star Wars, an angel appears. 
    
    It's not like I haven't seen him every day for the last year, but I've
    never *seen* him. 
    
    He's leaning forward on the couch, staring at the television, chin balanced
    on his hands like a kid.  He just got a hair cut, so his hair is just
    barely too short to curl, kinda bendy-wavy, the color of good black coffee
    and so soft-looking that it makes my fingers itch.  Eyes that are blue
    or gray or green, depending on what he's wearing and what split second
    I happen to be looking at him.  Bit of pizza sauce on the lower lip that
    seems almost obscene as it just sits there, waiting for that moist, pink
    tongue to whisk it away.  Perfect profile outlined in silver because
    of the TV light.  It's the kinda face that makes me hate most guys, but
    I can't hate him because if he *does* know he's that mind-twistingly
    beautiful, he doesn't do anything with it.  Nothing on purpose, at least.
    
    Then he looks at me, and says something about heroic archetypes and somebody
    Campbell, and he could be talking soup for all that I'm listening, because
    my head and my heart are imploding and exploding at the same time.  Time
    stretches out and squeezes in. 
    
    I know that it's written all over my face, and I hope he'll think it's
    indigestion.  It's killing me, but I don't want him to ever look away,
    and I would give anything if I could just stop this moment right here.
    Keep this instant for at least a million years or so, because Cupid just
    landed another one dead center. 
    
    I'm in love, and this time, the little bastard is really playing dirty,
    because this is my best friend, of all people!  What's more, he's a *guy*!
    As far as I knew, up until about three seconds ago, I was straight. 
    This is not what I had in mind. 
    
    Besides, even if my sexuality has gone berserk and started chasing after
    gorgeous Canadians, it doesn't really matter.  I *know* he could give
    straightness lessons to a ruler, because he's a *Mountie*, after all,
    and so deep-down-good that it makes my heart hurt to even think about
    what it must be like to try to be the nearest thing to a saint I figure
    ever existed in this fucked-up city. 
    
    He's got an IQ like Einstein, and I can't string together a decent sentence
    half the time.  He's all about control, and I think that patience is
    heating your instant coffee in the microwave instead of getting the hot
    water  straight from the tap.  He'll taste, touch, or smell anything
    to solve a case, and I get the raging heebie jeebies just from thinking
    about the morgue.  He looks like he's been saran-wrapped, and I've got
    permanent three-day stubblies and hair that's been styled by lightning
    bolt. 
    
    Love is realizing that I'm really, thoroughly, completely screwed, and
    I swear I can actually *hear* Cupid yucking it up. 
    
    Now Fraser's eyes are getting a little pinchy, and his lips are moving
    in a way that kinda looks like 'Are-You-All-Right-Ray?' 
    
    Aw, fuck.
    
    Love is sadistic.
    
    THE END               
    


End file.
